A serving of visual delights
Nikola Wojewoda’s illustrated ceramic plates showcase her drawings
A rediscovered love of drawing inspired Nikola Wojewoda’s latest body of work.
The Hamilton artist has tackled a variety of materials and techniques, including ceramic sculpture and paper collage. This time she put her drawing skills to work on stoneware plates she hand-built. Twenty-seven illustrated plates are on show in Contemplate, an exhibition at Teresa Seaton Studio and Gallery.
The series took seven long months to make.
“After work, almost every night in the studio, and all weekends,” Wojewoda tells me. “Thankful for a supportive husband who kept me fed.”
The subjects are as varied as the shapes of the plates: Flowers, human faces, insects, fish, birds and animals, some more fantastical than others.
Wojewoda’s style is highly detailed and space-filling. Line is important. Every object is clearly contained and outlined.
“Fox” inhabits a landscape of plants and a sky with curly clouds. The fox’s body and tail consist of tiny multidirectional lines in white against black. The whiskers are thin black lines on white.
A subtle texture enhances the surface, the result of Wojewoda using a sgraffito technique before the final firing.
“I covered the entire surface in black slip, which is removed with a tool to reveal the white stoneware clay,” she explains. “Like drawing in reverse.”
Not all the pieces are black and white. “God is Anonymous” features a pair of colourful stylized birds flanking a halved apple. Flowers and leaves fill the space around them. The design recalls eastern European folk art.
The birds’ bodies, broken into geometric designs filled with many patterns, look like they are made of stained glass or patchwork. It’s a style Wojewoda perfected in her earlier collage pieces.
Words appear above and below the apple. The letters contribute extra shapes to the composition. But the letters also belong to words, a way for the artist to express her ideas.
Working alone in her studio, Wojewoda says, gave her “the chance to listen to cultural and current affairs podcasts. There are many things that cause human suffering. Unfortunately, one of them is the politicization of religion, as a weapon of oppression. This expresses my feeling about that abuse.”
A female face looks out in “Goddess in her Adolescent Phase.” Flowers float beside her. Cloudlike circles outside her face echo the shapes of her cheeks. But beware: a snake with a forked tongue slithers out from her hair. And she’s winking at us.
“This was one of the earlier drawings,” Wojewoda recalls. “She just sort of popped out. Her snake hair and one-eyed gaze made me think of a young, not yet wise, goddess, disturbed from her meditative reverie.”
Wojewoda titled a trio of plates “Don’t be Afraid/ Make a Mistake/ No Regrets.” She drew fantastical creatures on the plates and added words. The middle plate bears the exhortation,
Regina Haggo, art historian, public speaker, curator, YouTube video maker and former professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@the spec.com Special to The Hamilton Spectator